Cities have more species diversity than you'd expect. A study of ants in Manhattan found not only a wide range of species, but also significant differences in the levels of biodiversity in different urban areas.

Eucalypts are a defining and distinctive feature of the Australian landscape. Large and small, we think of these hardy and adaptable trees as being at home in a variety of environments across the nation ranging from hot and ...

Two years into a study of factors influencing forest regeneration in Pennsylvania, researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences are offering never-before-seen insights into deer movement.

Human-set fires by a small Polynesian population in New Zealand around 750 years ago may have caused fire-vulnerable forests to shift to shrub land over decades, rather than over centuries, as previously thought, according ...

For decades, maple syrup producers have eyed the weather to help understand spring sugar yields. But new research in the journal Forest Ecology and Management reveals a more valuable metric for understanding – and even ...

Antibiotic-producing bacteria in soil are the source of many antibiotics used to combat diseases in humans and plants. But, surprisingly little is known about how these microbes impact tropical plant communities and ecosystems, ...

Available for download today, the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) and Allianza MREDD+ released the first detailed map of aboveground forest carbon stocks of Mexico. This carbon stock inventory is very valuable for Mexico, ...

Forest

A forest is an area with a high density of trees. There are many definitions of a forest, based on the various criteria. These plant communities presently cover approximately 9.4% of the Earth's surface (or 30% of total land area) in many different regions and function as habitats for organisms, hydrologic flow modulators, and soil conservers, constituting one of the most important aspects of the Earth's biosphere. Although a forest is classified primarily by trees a forest ecosystem is defined intrinsically with additional species such as fungi. A woodland, with more open space between trees, is ecologically distinct from a forest.